Connect4Life Value to Professional Partners

What is Juniper’s Connect4Life program?

C4L utilizes a high tech/high touch approach, integrated with electronic health record (EHR) and coordinated via a “medical concierge” approach. This initiative serves as a model for senior living providers looking to be part of post-acute care continuum; it also differentiates Juniper’s senior living from home care as a solution for high care/high needs individuals. The over-arching goal is to minimize the risk for re-hospitalizations and maximize the overall well-being of the individuals under our care.

C4L demonstrates the promise of integrating health and senior housing to manage population health – co-located services plus integrated systems combined with the supportive services of senior living. It delivers better outcomes for frail seniors, lower utilization of costly in-patient services, and hence provides great promise for containing if not reducing Medicare costs.

And what this means for you, our professional partners, is that our C4L program and attendant results can make you look good!

Our Results

In late 2016, we commissioned a group of researchers including a well-known John Hopkins scholar to review Connect4Life and help us understand whether the program actually improved wellbeing. They looked at measures for which both we and Medicare had published reliable data: hospital admissions, hospital readmissions for the same illness within 30 days of discharge, and emergency department visits.

We controlled the demographic cohort and compared like to like patient profiles. But overall Juniper’s population is sicker and frailer than the Medicare population overall and more than a similarly frail population cohort. Essentially Juniper is a “Hot Spot” for high care/high need Medicare Beneficiaries.

Juniper Re-hospitalizations Over 80% Lower than Similarly Frail Medicare Population

Value to Professionals Working with Seniors

Whether you are a physician, hospital discharge planner, social worker, guardian or other professional, C4L provides significant benefits to the seniors in your care as well as benefits to your organization.

For seniors, C4L provides the opportunity to access care in a home-like, life-affirming environment. It provides convenient, stable access to care from highly credentialed providers. These providers work together from a shared information platform, they get to know the resident as an individual, and communication is optimized, resulting in more effective care and associated wellbeing.

What this means for professionals is Juniper becomes part of the solution for value based care. We provide the supportive services necessary to manage someone with chronic health issues and functional limitations in a manner that minimizes need for costly inpatient services. For this population, we are the missing piece to manage outcomes and results. For hospitals and sub-acute providers, we can be an important component in controlling your re-hospitalization rates and “frequent flyers” to the emergency department.

We believe that by providing housing with supportive services and integrated clinical care, we can affect utilization and impact cost, but more importantly we impact overall resident well-being. This is a model that works for the community, the residents, the providers, and society.

More than 59 percent of the population is affected by chronic illness. Over the next 15 years, 80 percent of the U.S. population will experience one or more chronic conditions, costing more than $42 trillion in medical care spending and losses in employment productivity.

New research by Anne Tumlinson Innovations demonstrates that Connect4Life contributed to better clinical outcomes for frail seniors and suggests the potential for Medicare cost savings.